Do Birds Feel Love?

It’s clear that birds copulate, procreate, and promote their genes with alacrity. But love? Do birds feel love? Can they? To explore this question, it’s probably best to first define love. Love includes elements of need, but primarily those of affection. It’s an attachment to another being that inspires deep longing and desire to be together. It’s easy to observe this attachment behavior in parrots, especially pets. A succession of budgies and one venerable Chestnut-fronted Macaw (Charlie) have sought me out for caresses, allopreening and kisses over the years. Charlie was never more content than when she was perched on my shoulder, her wing pressed against my neck and cheek. But any mention of affection or “love” in parrots must include that other, unwelcome element: jealousy. Psittacine love can be jealous, and parrots demonstrate strong preferences in the partners they choose to shower with affection. When Bill and I first got together, Charlie would tenderly preen my cheek, eyelashes and hair, nibbling at my lips and making loud kissing noises. She’d then climb down my leg, waddle across the room, climb up Bill’s jeans, and bite him, once right in the middle of his back. Message sent, she’d waddle back to me, her true love and favorite possession.

Eventually, Bill and Charlie reached an understanding. I know one thing. That macaw loved a sip of beer.

While we’re used to declarations that our pet parrots “love” us just as we love them, and they can be quite demonstrative in showing their affection, the evidence is thinner for wild birds. No human can divine what a mated pair of geese or eagles may feel for one another, but stories abound of birds,especially Canada Geese, who spurned all offers from members of the opposite sex for years after a mate was killed. I’ve seen mourning behavior in a longterm captive Savannah Sparrow whose temporary cagemate, a dark-eyed junco, recovered from its wing injury and was released. The birds had roosted together each night in a single soft clump of feathers. When the junco was released, the Savannah Sparrow called frantically, became greatly agitated, then quit eating and sat, silent and still, on his perch for two days. Did Vanna love his cage partner? He certainly seemed lost without her.

Wild birds I’ve raised from tiny, featherless orphans demonstrate attachment to me, as would be expected for any young creature with a surrogate mother, even a weird, long-limbed primate mother. Mourning Doves in particular display strong attachment behavior, cuddling under my chin to nap and preening my hair and eyelashes.

Needless to say, this makes them quite pleasant to raise. Young robins act like spoiled brats,demanding food and attention long after they should be on their own. But the most startling demonstration of affection and perhaps love I’ve experienced came from an unexpected source: Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

In 2003, I raised three orphaned ruby-throats from the early pinfeather stage to release at around 30 days of age. I made sure they were able to self-feed from flowers and feeders before cranking the aviary window open and removing the screen. They all took off with such speed, disappearing into the surrounding yard, that I was flabbergasted to find one perched on the clothesline as I hung out laundry later that same afternoon. It was Adventure Joe, and he was famished and peeping, seeking me out for food and comfort. The other two sought me out, as well. Perhaps they weren’t as ready for the wild as they’d seemed. For the next month and a half, our yard was enchanted, populated by free-living hummingbirds who’d suddenly appear, solicit a little food, then go back to the flower beds and feeders. I chalked it up to the fact that the three had been hand-raised from a young age. It sure was a kick to have them around! I’ll never forget the day I looked behind me as I road the roaring riding lawnmower, to see a little phalanx of three hummingbirds following over my head.

The real test of hummingbird bonds came in 2004. My three orphans had left for Central America in September 2003. Would they return? On April 17, 2004, my husband Bill stepped out, coffee mug in hand, to take the morning sun. A male Ruby-throated Hummingbird zipped up, hovered in front of his face, then poked his beak in between each of Bill’s fingers. It was as close to a handshake as a hummingbird could manage. Later than day, I looked out to see two male hummingbirds sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on a twig by our front door, one that had been their favorite as youngsters. I rummaged around until I found the small feeder they’d used the summer before, and filled it with the protein-rich solution the three had been raised on. As I reached to hang it from a branch, three adult male rubythroats wove through my arms and around my head, fighting to be the first to feed. Six months and two ocean crossings behind them, my hummingbirds were home, right where they belonged.

Homing instinct isn’t necessarily a demonstration of affection, I know that. I wondered about the nature of the bond I forged with the three hummingbird orphans. Would any young hummingbird become attached to its caretaker, or was this dependency an artifact of the birds’ having been hand-fed since they were in pinfeathers? I am rarely able to put a whole puzzle together, usually being given only a few pieces at a time. By the next summer, I’d have one more piece. Just a year after the original three orphans came in, I got a call from a woman with a newly fledged hummingbird who’d been found trapped in a greenhouse. Bits of down still adhered to its head feathers. It was weak and debilitated from its long, hot ordeal. I put it in an empty glass aquarium and brought a small feeder filled with hummingbird maintenance diet up to its bill. It quickly accepted this food source, and was self-feeding from then on. By the next morning it was strong enough to fly. I put up a nylon screen tent in the yard and released the hummingbird into it, hanging a feeder in the center of the tent. I kept the foundling for six more days. I never handled it, hand-fed it, or did anything more than speak kindly to it. It was an altogether different upbringing than my three fledglings enjoyed the previous year.

Sylvia Salvia was released at around Day 28, self-feeding like a champ from a special feeder and from flowers all around my gardens.

And the oddest thing happened. Just like the hand-fed orphans, she actively sought me out in the yard. She’d land on a low twig right by my face and peep. When I’d speak to her, she’d ruffle her feathers and preen companionably. I knew that this behavior had little to do with food, because I hand-fed her only once. She’d leave to visit the flower garden or her feeder, then return to perch near my face. As time went on and she gained flight prowess, she’d hover in front of my nose, chipping irritably until I brought my finger up in front of my face. And shed land on it, fluff her feathers, and settle down for a good preen and one-on-one chat. Seemingly satisfied, she’d rocket away on some pressing hummingbird business.

I cannot describe how it felt to have a free-living, essentially wild hummingbird seek me out for companionship. I’m still searching for an answer to this delightful conundrum. I’ve decided that, lacking a mother, Sylvia simply needed to make contact with someone she knew, someone who cared. And somehow, having a person speak lovingly to her filled that need. Being near me was clearly reassuring to her. Did she love me? I can’t say, but I sure loved her. Whatever was going on, I know that I will never be through learning about how birds’ minds work, even the tiniest ones.

Julie Zickefoose is an artist, naturalist and writer specializing in natural history. Her writing is based on keen observation of animal and human behavior, and she likes to interweave solid natural history information with larger philosophical themes to challenge and inspire the reader. Julie contributes three-minute natural history commentaries to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. She illustrates her books and magazine articles with her own sketches and watercolor paintings. Letters from Eden (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) will soon be followed by a memoir about the birds she has raised, healed, studied and followed throughout her life. She lives at Indigo Hill, an 80-acre wildlife sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio with her husband, Bill Thompson III, their children Phoebe and Liam, and their Boston terrier, Chet Baker.

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Fascinating info Julie, I never cease to be amazed at the relationships birds can build with rehabbers…and if they can do that with people (of all things…), who knows what they are capable of with their own species.

It’s interesting to me that hummingbirds seemed so content in your company, they are usually so territorial and competitive, and in most species (including Ruby-throated, I think) males and females don’t really function as a pair after mating is done. Cool stuff.

Good point, Felonious…rubythroats do seem the Least Likely to Form Attachments of all the birds in the class. Maybe that’s why I was so surprised to have them seek me out for a little lovin’. I’ve concluded that most of the “irascible” behavior we see in hummingbirds is probably an artifact of the highly artificial feeding situations we impose upon them. When in nature is a hummingbird presented with a superabundant, never-ending food source in one location? Of course they go a little bonkers trying to protect something like that–it’s like the Bottomless Pint of Guinness.

In my experience, hummingbirds are ornery at any good food source…this morning I watched 6 hummingbird species at ONE tree (and not in Arizona, no less!), not a feeder in sight. They battled and carried on per usual.

I agree though, feeding stations can bring in huge concentrations of hummers that would rarely occur at trees or patches of flowers, and that certainly intensifies things.

Once I saw a robin get hit by a car I went to see if it was still alive and it was. So I picked it up and took it to my house. I only held it for about ten minuets and then he flew away.Then the next day I seen a robin siting in a tree so I walked up and it let me touch it then he flew away. I knew it was the same one because it flew differend ever since. I would not think they would remember you just after ten minets. But since then he flew to the same tree everyday.

I once raised a sparrow that had fallen from it’s nest and was not able to be returned. She was still bald. Of course, she was attached to me as a baby, but as soon as she could feed herself, she became very wild and I released her when she could fly well. That was three years ago. She does not land on me or let me touch her. But she drops in and says “hello” often. Her “cheep” is just different enough that I know it and she respond to the “tic, tic” sounds that I made when I fed her as a baby.
Also we have had a male Rufous Hummingbird winter with us for the past two winters. He is wild and has never been touched, but he always talks to me when I am outside. I will greet him with “Hi Rufie” and he will begin to chitter and cock his head looking at me.
I do believe that they form emotional attachments with humans, and mostly with other birds.
I only have to hear the sorrowful call of a lone Canada Goose circling and flying this way and that searching for a lost mate to be sure of that.

I think that birds (or animals in general) that are long-lived and form long-term bonds would be the most likely to feel emotions akin to love. Parrots are long-lived and form long term bonds with long chick-rearing periods, exactly the same evolutionary choices that led to us having love.
I’m elaborating on that thought on my piece for Wednesday, with regards to another long lived bird, so I’ll save my words for there!

What a beautiful story! I look forward to reading your book. The two birds I’ve loved the most were a pair of Scrub Jays who visited our deck where we used to live in Marin County, CA. They liked to eat peanuts, and we would supply them on demand. Each year they would bring their new baby for some peanuts… and to be admired by us. Eventually the babies would be sent off into the world to fend for themselves. One year we were surprised by twin babies!

I always find it galling how readily some science-types will pooh-pooh the observations and empathic/intuitive sense we use to ascribe “emotions” to animals as completely unscientific and ill-founded, while at the same time they routinely employ methodologies that are chockfull of their own subjective elements and unproven assumptions.

Got home from Boston at 6 pm. Headed straight to the stove to mix up bug omelet. Gathered mealworms, tweezers, fresh dry grass for wet nests, and spent the next three hours feeding 23 starving baby bluebirds in my boxes. I’ll get up at dawn to do it again tomorrow. I knew this would happen with the hot early spring cooling down to below-normal temperatures. Five died while I was away. I’m doing my best to make sure no more follow them. Yes, I love the birds I care for, tame and wild, and they return the gift in so many ways. I fed the last brood at 8:40 as the crescent moon rose. It was a moment.

I sincerely believe that birds can love each other. After four years together, my 22-year old cockatiel Audrey died leaving the four-year old cockatiel Conner in mourning. Conner used to climb inside Audrey’s cage to sing to him almost every day, but after Audrey died Conner was silent for five months. Conner still makes me hold him in front of Audrey’s cage and he won’t climb inside anymore.

You don’t know how heartwarming your story is to me… I’m leaving you this comment with tears in my eyes…
I’m raising two sparrows because the bird sanctuary in my area wouldn’t take them in… And I’m so amazed by how much I have learnt from these two little beings in the last year and a half… Most people think I’m crazy, so reading your beautiful story and knowing that there are people like you in this world is very precious to me…
Thank you so much for taking the time and share this!

I know what you mean Christina…sparrows that have no worth in this world found a place in our hearts. I wish I could keep mine as a pet but I’m leaving. The first time I picked up that little bird, I just wanted to be kind. But now as I’m preparing to say good-bye, I want to thank him for all the totally unexpected sweet memories. I wish you many more days with the two little beings!